Chapter 11: The Last Supper

The candidates submitted their papers early, and the exam ended successfully.

Everyone jumped in fright. Old Yu was so anxious he nearly stomped his feet through the floor.

“You! Why are you doing this again?! Didn’t I say you can’t damage the tableware? You can’t damage the tableware! You—ugh!”

Qi Yang held the broken base of the glass up for inspection without even lifting his head. “I know what I’m doing.”

922: “…”

Say that again with your conscience intact. What exactly do you have?

A habitual rule-breaker who treated violations like daily meals actually had the nerve to claim he had restraint. Shameless.

The room fell silent for several seconds.

Almost everyone thought Qi Yang had violated the rules again. They stared nervously at the answer wall, waiting for it to display a fourth violation notice.

No one knew what punishment awaited someone who broke the rules four times in a row. After seeing Baldy lose his mind earlier, nobody even wanted to imagine it.

At one point, the notification area on the answer wall seemed to flash red for a moment, but it returned to normal in the blink of an eye.

It kept flickering red, then white, then red again several times. In the end, not a single word appeared.

154 looked utterly dumbfounded.

922 continued adding fuel to the fire from the side. “Feels like the system’s about to suffocate itself holding that in…”

In the end, the one who broke the silence was still Qi Yang himself.

He handed the broken glass base to Yu Wen and said, “See if there’s anything inside. My eyes are bothering me.”

Yu Wen was kneeling on the floor, panicking out of his mind. “Bro, damaging tableware counts as a violation…”

Qi Yang stepped away from the light, closed his eyes briefly, and said in a cold voice, “Which eye of yours saw me damage tableware?”

Yu Wen held up the shattered glass, thinking, Am I blind?

Qi Yang said, “The question clearly states there are twelve sets of tableware now. Can you count?”

Yu Wen: “…”

Qi Yang: “Want me to teach you?”

Yu Wen: “…”

After a moment of silence, everyone suddenly realized what he meant.

That’s right!

The question explicitly stated: “Only twelve guests and twelve sets of tableware remain in the hunter’s cabin.” Those twelve sets sat neatly on the wooden table, numbered, complete, and untouched. How could that include the shattered glass on the floor?

Whether the exam system intended it or not, that glass had already been removed from the tableware count. So what did it matter if it got damaged again?

“Bro, you’re my dad!”

Yu Wen instantly revived and excitedly held half the glass base up to the light.

Old Yu was just about to smack him on the forehead when Yu Wen suddenly exclaimed, “Wait! I think there really is something!”

The base of the wine glass was a slightly concave circle, connected to the long stem used for holding it. But Qi Yang had snapped part of the stem off, leaving an uneven break.

Under the combined glow of the oil lamp and fireplace, Yu Wen twisted himself into impossible angles like a spider spirit.

“This angle! Look from here! There really is something!”

The candidates immediately crowded around him, heads bumping together, but none of them could find the right distance or angle.

“What exactly is it? Where?”

The tattooed man tried for a while before finally giving up. “What did you see? Can’t you just say it directly?”

Yu Wen replied, “If I could see it clearly, would I still be twisting myself like this?”

He was about to start arguing with the tattooed man when someone tapped him twice on the shoulder.

“Let me see.”

It was Qi Yang.

After resting with his eyes closed for a while, he seemed to feel a little better. He took the glass base from Yu Wen’s hand.

“Here, like this. Look from here.” Yu Wen obediently adjusted the angle and pointed to where the stem connected to the circular base. “See that? Feels like there’s a picture embedded inside. But it’s blurry. I can’t tell if it’s a drawing or words.”

Qi Yang gave a casual “Oh,” then struck it again without hesitation.

Crack.

The stem snapped cleanly away from the base at the connection point, as if it had always been fragile there.

“There’s something!”

Yu Wen caught the object that floated down from the break and held it in his palm as carefully as if he were worshipping an ancestor tablet.

Everyone focused their eyes on it.

It really was a thin little disc, barely larger than a pea. Before Qi Yang smashed the glass, it had been hidden beneath the stem.

The back side was blank, like a miniature mirror.

On the front were tiny letters:

Simon the Zealot

The foreigner Mike softly read it aloud.

The two elderly ladies frowned so hard their faces wrinkled completely. “Huh?”

Mike: “…”

Grandma: “…”

Being unable to explain things in Chinese was truly fatal.

While everyone was still confused, someone quietly said, “The Last Supper.”

“Who are you cursing?” the tattooed man snapped angrily.

The speaker was the sickly bamboo-pole-like man. He always looked exhausted just from talking, quiet to the point of seeming depressed. He did plenty of things, but his presence was so weak that people barely noticed him.

This was the first time everyone had waited for him to continue speaking.

And only after thinking for a while did they finally remember his name was Zhou Jin.

Zhou Jin weakly rolled his eyes at the tattooed man and said, “I’m talking about Da Vinci’s famous painting, The Last Supper.”

The tattooed man looked ready to speak again.

Afraid he’d ask something horrifying like “Who’s Da Vinci?”, Zhou Jin quickly turned to Qi Yang instead.

“Simon the Zealot is one of the twelve apostles in the painting.”

“You memorized all twelve apostles?” Yu Wen cried out with the awe of an academic failure.

Zhou Jin coughed for a while before softly saying, “I study art. I just happen to know a little.”

Dinner. Twelve.

These key details matched the situation in the cabin perfectly.

Although the older people didn’t know much about The Last Supper, even the twin elementary school girls shouted out a name:

“Judas!”

“That’s right! Judas!” Yu Yao and Yu Wen weren’t siblings, but they might as well have been. They echoed each other immediately.

In The Last Supper, Judas was the world-famous traitor. The moment his name appeared, it practically smelled like the answer.

Everyone became excited at once.

But just as they were about to rush into action, they suddenly realized something.

“Wait, no—it’s not asking for a name!”

Every set of tableware on the long wooden table had a corresponding number. What belonged on the answer wall wasn’t the name “Judas,” but the number of the glass containing Judas’s name.

The hot-tempered tattooed man immediately rushed back to the dining table and picked up another wine glass to inspect.

He had clearly seen the paper slip fall from the connection between the stem and the base earlier. But no matter how he examined the glass from every possible angle, he still couldn’t see the contents hidden inside.

His eyeballs were practically glued to the glass wall. “Why can’t I see it?”

Actually, it wasn’t just him. Everyone had already checked these glasses earlier. If the hidden words were visible at first glance, they wouldn’t have waited until now.

Everyone knew where the names were hidden.

But none of them could see them.

And unlike the broken glass on the floor, these glasses couldn’t be smashed or snapped apart. They couldn’t be broken open the way Qi Yang had done earlier.

Suddenly, Yu Wen slapped his forehead.

“I know!”

“What?”

“Refraction!” Yu Wen said. “Yu Yao and I wrote refraction in our answers! The names are hidden in the glasses, and we can’t see them because… uh… because the refraction is wrong! I forgot how to explain it, but I’m pretty sure I’ve done a problem like this before.”

Everyone: “…”

That unfortunate description alone was enough to make people despair.

Watching him gesture awkwardly made it extremely difficult to believe he actually knew how to solve the problem.

Even so, everyone still clung to a final sliver of hope.

“So how do we see it?”

Yu Wen looked deeply ashamed. “I… stopped studying physics after sophomore year. That question was at least two or three years ago. I… forgot.”

“…”

Of course you did.

…

Qi Yang expressionlessly watched Yu Idiot flail around explaining nonsense.

He had originally planned to tolerate it a little longer, but then he caught sight of the proctors out of the corner of his eye.

922 had already dragged over a charcoal brazier and started setting up a grill rack. The remaining half-box of precious beef was carefully arranged on top.

154 wore a stiff expression, occasionally glancing at him, though nobody could tell whether he was hungry or simply unable to endure his coworker’s stupidity.

As for 001…

He didn’t even need to move. Just sitting there was enough to radiate provocation and mockery in giant capital letters.

Qi Yang withdrew his gaze, yanked the keys from Hunter A’s waist, and strode into the kitchen.

The paper slips with the names were attached beneath the stems of the wine glasses, visible only through the glass’s refraction. So what if the normal viewing angle didn’t work?

Then make the light refract again.

Qi Yang searched through the kitchen cabinets, but couldn’t find any usable water. Hunter A kept talking about wine, yet the glasses he brought out had all been empty.

The only liquid in the entire kitchen was the trail of blood winding across the floor.

And even that was nearly dry.

The harder something was to find, the more important it usually was.

This practically told Qi Yang outright that the key to the answer lay here.

Holding the keys, he walked out of the kitchen and swept his gaze around the cabin. Finally, his eyes landed on the neighboring room.

The door with the hanging rooster was the only one that had never been opened.

Without hesitation, he selected the last key and inserted it into the lock.

Click.

The door opened immediately.

A stale smell of dust rushed toward him. Qi Yang covered his nose and waved a hand in front of his face.

The room was tiny, more like a storage closet than anything else. But instead of brooms and mops, there was only a lonely wooden rack.

And on it sat lonely bottles of wine.

Everyone crowded around as Qi Yang picked up a bottle and said, “Found it.”

Yu Wen immediately slapped his thigh like the world’s most useless after-the-fact strategist. “Right, right! Add liquid! I remembered!”

The moment the bottle was uncorked, a strong and unpleasant smell of cheap alcohol spread through the entire cabin.

This had been the most important part of the hunter’s feast.

But he would never get the chance to enjoy it.

Qi Yang poured a shallow layer of amber-colored wine into Wine Glass Number One.

Everyone craned their necks toward the rim of the glass, holding their breath.

“There! Really! I can see it now!” Old Yu the drunkard shouted first in excitement.

Another name appeared inside the glass:

Matthew

Zhou Jin grew excited as well. “Matthew! That’s right—it really is The Last Supper. Hurry and find Judas!”

Everyone moved quickly, filling all twelve glasses one by one.

The apostles’ names gradually appeared:

Bartholomew

John

Thomas

Philip

…

By the time they reached Glass Number Eleven, Baldy—who was seated at Seat Twelve—had started trembling nonstop.

Only two names remained undiscovered now, and they just happened to be the two most important figures in the painting:

Judas and Jesus.

If the name in Glass Eleven turned out to be Jesus, then Judas would be hidden in the glass before Baldy, making him the cursed guest.

And he would very likely die here.

Baldy was so terrified he nearly vomited. Even in confinement, even when he saw those mangled corpses, he had never been this afraid.

Because those bloody remains had belonged to someone else.

But now, the one about to die was him.

Suddenly, the crowd burst into cheers.

Zhou Jin’s voice rang out among them:

“Judas! It’s Judas!”

Baldy froze for a long moment before collapsing weakly onto the table.

It was Number Eleven!

Thank God! Judas was in Glass Eleven!

Not him! It wasn’t his retribution…

…

The answering knife was shoved into Zhou Jin’s hand. For the first time since entering the cabin, he smiled.

“Me? Alright then, I’ll do it…”

Zhou Jin stood before the answer wall, gripped the knife handle tightly, took a deep breath, and carved a “1” into the wall.

Just as he was about to carve the second “1,” a figure suddenly rushed over from behind and grabbed his wrist.

“No. We were almost misled.”

Zhou Jin turned around in shock and saw Qi Yang standing beside him, calmly saying:

“It’s not 11. It’s 12.”

In The Last Supper, the one ultimately nailed to the cross and sacrificed was Jesus.

The cursed guest was the one seated in that position.

Judas was merely the betrayer.

…

The number 12 was carved neatly onto the answer wall.

The moment Qi Yang put down the knife, the silent radio suddenly crackled to life.

【Correct answer detected.】

【Candidates submitted early. This examination has ended successfully.】

【Final rewards and punishments will be calculated shortly.】

Submitting thirty-five hours, twenty-two minutes, and eleven seconds early.

Just imagine that.